Cape Henry, Virginia

Cape Henry is a cape on the Atlantic shore of Virginia located in the northeast corner of Virginia Beach. It is the southern boundary of the entrance to Chesapeake Bay.

Across the mouth of the bay to the north is Cape Charles. Named for sons of King James I of England in 1607, together Cape Henry and Cape Charles form the Virginia Capes.

Cape Henry was named on April 26, 1607 in honor of Henry Frederick Stuart, the elder of two sons of King James I of England to survive to the age of 18 and heir-apparent to the throne of Great Britain, by an expedition of the London Company branch of the proprietary Virginia Company headed by Captain Christopher Newport. After an unusually long voyage of 144 days from England, it was their first landfall, an event which has come to be called "The First Landing". Soon after this landing the English colonists erected a wooden cross and gave thanks for a successful crossing to a new land. In the First Charter of Virginia, King James I devoted parcels of land for the purpose of spreading the Christian religion. The Charter reads in part: "We greatly commending, and graciously accepting of, their Desires for the Furtherance of so noble a Work, which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the Glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance..."

Captain Newport, with his three ships, Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery, and the group of 104 men and boys, subsequently explored inland and established Jamestown which became the first permanent English settlement in North America.

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